Facebook extends React Native to Android

Facebook today is unveiling React Native for Android, extending its JavaScript development technology for Web and native development to Google's popular mobile platform.

React Native lets developers create Web, iOS, and Android apps with the same core set of code by leveraging JavaScript and React, a Facebook- and Instagram-developed JavaScript library for building user experiences. React Native was open-sourced in March.

Developers using React Native get declarative, self-contained UI components and fast development cycles on the mobile platform while retaining speed, fidelity, and the feel of native applications, Facebook bloggers said on Monday.

"At Facebook we've been using React Native in production for over a year now," Facebook bloggers Daniel Witte and Philipp von Weitershausen said. "Almost exactly a year ago, our team set out to develop the Ads Manager app. Our goal was to create a new app to let the millions of people who advertise on Facebook manage their accounts and create new ads on the go. It ended up being not only Facebook's first fully React Native app but also the first cross-platform one."

React Native is intended to make developers efficient via a learn once, write anywhere paradigm. It supports use of standard platform components, such as UITabBar on iOS and Drawer on Android, thus providing a consistent look and feel across the platform ecosystem, according to Facebook. These components can be incorporated into an app using React component counterparts suchas TabBarIOS and DrawerLayoutAndroid.

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